The West in 2025 is replete with parasitic bureaucratic delusions - such as the CO2 climate psychosis, antiracism and xenophilia, feminism, pseudo-healthism and so on - which each weaken, and together will probably destroy, our nations and civilization.
An early example of the parasitic bureaucratic delusion phenomenon was the Bomber Doctrine which led to the Bomber Mafia - which in World War II dominated the thinking of Winston Churchill and those with strategic control of the UK military.
In brief; the Bomber Doctrine was that long-range bombing could win a major war, by destroying the enemy's capacity to wage war and creating a state of national chaos - after which the Army could simply "walk in" and take-over. The Navy was consigned to a very minor role altogether.
This hypothesis (it was hardly even that - more of a story, scenario, set-of-assertions) was warmly received after the years of mass-slaughterous infantry stalemate in the First World War; and the Bomber Doctrine became the basis for the continued-existence and expansion of the RAF.
Unless you have read some of the things said in the years leading up to WWII and even during that war, you probably could not believe the extent to which it was seriously argued that strategic bombing was, by itself, sufficient to win the war with Germany.
Arguing that, for instance, Fighter Command was not necessary - was indeed a waste of resources that should be directed into building more and bigger bombers.
If it had not been for the foresight, ability, character and intransigence of Hugh Dowding (in charge of Fighter Command leading up to the war); Britain would undoubtedly have lost the Battle of Britain.
Bomber Command even regarded the 1944 invasion of France and Western Europe as a needless waste of resources that they could better have used - and strongly opposed D-Day, tried not to cooperate with planning - but were eventually compelled into reluctant cooperation.
The appeal of the Bomber Doctrine in WWII Britain, especially in the early half of the war - was that it clamed and promised (and the word promise is literally true) that Strategic Bombing would win the war, without need for an invasion of Europe, on its own, and despite Britain's Army being outmatched by the German Army - if only the bombing could become large enough in scale.
Therefore the Bomber Doctrine had an apparently irresistible appeal to those who were determined that Britain could and should destroy Germany and retake Europe - from its position of besieged isolation.
The consequence was that - in practice - everything possible should be sacrificed to the bombing imperative. Whatever the national emergency or military crisis, for believers in the Doctrine and their supporters; the answer was always the same: more bombers, more strategic bombing.
The Bomber Mafia fought, with considerable success - to suck resources from all the other branches of the RAF; and from the Army and Navy in general.
Indeed it has been estimated (it is hard to be exact, but this is not implausible) that the total resources consumed by RAF Bomber Command during WWII were greater than the entirety of the rest of the armed forces put-together - i.e. greater than the British Army, Royal Navy, RAF Fighter Command, and RAF Coastal Command, combined.
And that this was largely responsible for the national debt that delayed UK recovery from the war for so much longer than anywhere else.
As it was, Britain very nearly lost the war in early 1943 by severance of the absolutely vital ship-borne supplies - ie. defeat by the U-Boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. It seems that the nation came very close to collapse - it was a real emergency, for those not blinded by the Doctrine*.
What is horrifying to me is that this near-loss was preventable; and had been caused by the domination and intransigence of the Bomber Mafia, and the psychological hold the Bomber Doctrine had on Churchill - and those responsible for the allocation of resources and priorities between the various competing demands of the war effort.
With the escalating U-Boat threat; air cover was essential to successfully defending naval convoys. This was perfectly possible - but until late in 1943, Coastal Command was starved of resources and aircraft by the insatiable maw of Bomber Command - which took nearly-all of the suitable escort and anti-submarine aircraft, and all of the best aircraft.
What was needed was a very long range four-engined aircraft that could provide air-cover across the whole Atlantic; and it was well within technological capabilities to provide such machines quickly and in large numbers; and thereby protect the vital convoys.
But the Bomber Mafia fought bitterly and tirelessly to keep all such aircraft for its own allegedly war-winning effort - and were, overall, supported in this by Churchill.
(Eventually Coastal Command got sufficient Very Long Range Liberator aircraft to provide full air-cover, hunt and destroy the U-Boats, and win the Battle of the Atlantic.)
My point here is that the very-nearly war-losing and delusionally-false Bomber Doctrine was never more than a purely-hypothetical, un-tested and un-evidenced, dreamed-up narrative.
But it was a make-believe tale that was adopted and sustained by a powerful bureaucracy - which "sold" the idea to those who wanted it to be true - for whatever various reasons of their own.
Once the Bomber Doctrine was established and psychologically-accepted, and the Bomber Mafia had become entrenched and powerful - then logic, evidence, even the imminence of national collapse - could not dent it.
The Bomber Doctrine was a psychosis, that fuelled a parasite (the Bomber Mafia), which all-but annihilated the nation that hosted it.
The Bomber Doctrine was, then, a literal psychosis - and one that (at least) twice very-nearly lost Britain the war - and by bankrupting the nation, lost us the peace that followed - but this made literally zero difference to its proponents... Except to increase their fanatical zeal.
The analogy with our present situation is obvious.
Nothing short of the actual collapse of the nation and civilization will stop the delusional bureaucratic parasites from their work of destruction.
And looking-out from the ruins, upon the chaos they helped cause - still they will never admit that they were wrong all along.
*Bomber Command seemed unable to grasp even that they themselves needed to win the Battle of the Atlantic in order to function. Britain imported all her oil and petrol by ship, without which bombers would - obviously - be unable to fly! Yet such was the delusional nature of their thinking that simple self-interest could not overcome it... Again this psychotic incoherence is something seen in analogous bureaucratic situations, here-and-now.
3 comments:
As to your last point, Franz Conrad (chief of Austria-Hungary's general staff 1906-1917) was better placed than anyone to know how poorly his army was equipped and trained compared to its potential opponents; but this knowledge did nothing to reduce his enthusiasm for 'preventive war' against Serbia. Amongst many appalling errors, it is said that he and his staff used railway timetables from the 1870s to work out how long it would take the Russian army to mobilise in 1914.
Conrad never admitted that he had been wrong, even after the total collapse and break-up of the country he was employed to defend. The human cost of his malevolent incompetence is incalculable.
If it were not for the example currently being shown by the ruling class of every Western country, one might write Conrad off as a lone (if charismatic) charlatan: but he could only have survived so long with very powerful backing. So our problem is not new: but it does seem to be much deeper and broader.
"Wings over the world." H.G. Wells' turn-of-the-century theorizing may have contributed to the pet idea. Humanity had never known a time when explosives and incendiaries could be dropped from the air so the idea, untested, that aerial bombing rendered the rest of warfare methods obsolete became entrenched in the minds of planners in the several decades before World War II.
Robert Heinlein later wrote that the most important fact of rest of the century and beyond is that it is impossible to repel an attack from outer space. This is technically what an ICBM strike is. But he knew that guerilla warfare would always be with us, as the Vietnam war showed.
@a_p - Indeed. The sources I've read usually mention HG Wells as someone whose work encouraged the strategic bombing delusion.
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